Go with your gut

Your gut is for eating, not thinking.

The “go with your gut” mantra glorifies emotional decisions.  Go with your gut gives you permission to be delightfully frivolous.  It also gives you permission to be selfish, fearful, and bigoted.  It allows you to blame everyone but yourself.  Go with your gut adds imagined credibility to arguments only because they reinforce your current view of the world.  It leaves you vulnerable to any speaker clever in the use of emotional hooks.  Go with your gut allows you to read past the holes in their argument, then fight to hold onto the conclusion all the more frantically when you are trying to stand on the pitted ground of imagined truths.

Sure there are places to go with your gut.  It is great for picking a puppy, choosing a color for your house, deciding what flavor of ice cream to enjoy. 

If the decision will have a serious impact on your life, the lives of loved ones, or the lives of any other living beings, please take the time to research the facts.  Please take the time to consider whether you may be discounting the validity of data because it you find that data uncomfortable.  Take the time to consider where you may be accepting of data because you want it to be true.